As I stormed out of the feminist letter reading society's inaugural journal launch and letter reading where I had previously made an ass of myself and then laughed/apologized profusely for making an ass of myself, I realized that this pattern could not continue.
The pattern of, time and time again, misapprehending myself and then throwing myself away as adamantly as is possible.
I threw myself away yesterday.
I took my hard work, my confessions that were supposed to be powerful, inspiring in their bitter honesty (at least to myself) and cathartic.
Instead, they made me sick.
they made my eyes burn and my body tense
like words i had never intended to write, they alienated me.
The design editor had left out a large part of the collage that I had carefully assembled to correspond with the rest of the piece.
Parts I had considered necessary to the nexus of visuals that had been my secret weapon, my refuge, in my imprisoned world.
a way to smirk at the world, a way to lose myself, a way to win.
last night was not victorious.
I felt cheap. I felt alienated.
my anxieties (let me give you a brief little tasting of the very best of my ever-increasing smorgasbord of mental fuckeries that NEVER GO AWAY: feeling I don't know enough about music, books, art, movies, TV, world events, politics, comedy, ANYTHING; so that I am in such deficit that I have actually become less than human; an uncultured swine unworthy of any of my "accomplishments" and certainly most unworthy of the high esteem of people that I respect and admire) finally confronted me in a very real way.
I realized in trying to "out" myself as something dangerously close to a nihilist, I had really just set myself up to share something with the world that I simply could not be ready to share. that exposing the sacred contents of my distorted mind did not bring redemption or understanding but airway-restricting fear.
I had tried to learn to swim by throwing myself in near-freezing, stormy waters, and I could feel my airway filling up with water as the reality of my illiteracy came crashing down on me.
this chaos (or at least the chaos it represented) wasn't something I was ready to write.
I should have written about the maddening fact that a little part of me is furious with those who are effortlessly thin, able to wear the mini-est of '90s skirts without destroying them upon sitting down and the tinyest of vintage dresses violently erupting from them in a seemingly-innocuous inhale. Those who are effortlessly thin and don't have to betray their personal ideology of feminism and freedom and individuality by starving themselves in order to be that way.
I'm in a catch-22.
starving would save a hell of a ton of money. ha ha.
and it would work.
it has before.
and although i am neglecting to acknowledge that it is there, i have that discipline.
I could do it.
I could wear jeans.
and be able to actually assume a sitting position without physically feeling my soul shrink. I could look at my thighs in a mirror and not shudder; getting dressed in the morning could not be a sickening cocktail of total war and desperate denial.
I could finally be like those elusive Ethical Ectomorphs who write for trendy papers and journals, bikeride not in head-to-toe Costco spandex but in delicate vintage dresses and non-stretch denim because they aren't liable to physically break out of them, somehow manage to attend every event and concert despite their involvement in every social justice / arts / political organization on campus that's cool enough to merit their membership and live in what is essentially an arts collective of young overachievers who use big words correctly and unapologetically do it all.
Instead, I neither appease my set of feminist ideals or reach the illusory goal of being thin, perfect and suddenly shedding my anxieties in favour or LIVING. Instead of both, I have neither. And will continue to if I continue to let my mental life ensue like this.
I don't currently have anorexia nervosa, though I once hospitalized for it when I was 10.
I haven't binged and purged since grade 11 when I gorged myself at a birthday party and then subsequently left an incriminating amalgam of lasagna and chocolate cake in the hosts' toilet that would later elicit adamant food-poisoning defences from my brother when his concerned female classmates questioned my mental health.
But that doesn't mean my depression and anxiety isn't also comorbid with living (eating disorder) hell.
because it's not my eating patterns or my nutritional intake that's dysfunctional.
it's my mind.
I have rumination syndrome.
no one in this fucking hemisphere knows what the fuck that is.
ever since i discovered the joys of severely restricting my food intake - revelling at calling one tiny slice of pizza dinner or of systematically throwing out 2/3 of my lunch daily - i had instinctively known how to regurgitate. my food.
let me explain it to you since not many people readily admit to this maladaptation.
I eat my food. and then when I'm caused to stop - for social, personal or logistical reasons - I bring it back up using my diaphram (hey! all that vocal breathing technique mastered for my abandoned music major is useful for something!).
I re-eat my food. for about 30 minutes after a meal or until the chunks of bolus become too watery or my stomach acid renders them toxic.
It's an asocial type of problem. which is why I found out it was a thing after 8 years of googling in vain that only yeilded biological information about momma birds' eating and feeding patterns. Finally, when I was in grade 12, I discovered that there were other people with my secret disorder.
It's not that it's harmful in the same ways that anorexia or bulimia are. The long-term effects are not known and there is precious little literature on the subject. Most people who do it (like me) never tell anyone. I will most-likely not die from this, and can largely lead a normal life without having to complete the near-impossible task of giving up rumination.
There are just a few problems that I have with the fact that I re-experience my food daily:
1. I'm doing it to self-soothe, much like an alcoholic depends on booze. I need it, I cling to it, there is no place I will not do it. But it takes the place of other outlets that, if aren't physically healthier, are at least mentally healthier.
2. it isolates me. It makes me feel like a freak. It's disgusting, it's wrong, it's backwards. more than anything though, it's just so obscenely weird that it causes me daily shame. it's so odd that if I were to tell anyone, they would a. forget its name, b. think they had imagined it or c. instantly forget i had or that this is something that plagues me daily
3. I can't control it. Sometimes I go weeks without doing it. Maybe I'm not eatingenough to bring anything back. but other weeks it's a 24/7 thing that puts me in my place.
4. the psychiatrists that I have seen and even staff at eating disorder clinics have never - I repeat NEVER - heard of it. Those who do their research are not aware of an effective way to cure it, or if there's even a real incentive to stop, as it is not necessarily physically damaging.
5. although i have taken a hiatus from what used to be my passion, I am a singer. coaxing my food the opposite way through my esophagus must have some impact on the already delicate balance of my system of singing organs.
There are two people I have shared this condition in the decade that has elapsed since first discovering this
'secret talent'. They are my mother (who couldn't help but ask me how I could be eating something when dinner ended 20 minutes ago) and my big sister and eternal confidant, Heather, who I can safely say that I love. i told my first boyfriend too, but he didn't say much, and I can safely say that he had no idea what i was talking about as we were both naked and i could have pretty much told him that I had committed infanticide for all the attention he was paying to my words.
in conclusion, i will make a few statements:
1. I am fragile.
2. throwing around your secrets like unrestrained breasts during sex will not make you free
3. regardless of whether it's rumination syndrome or anything else, no one - not even a professional in the appropriate field - owes it to you to understand or even begin to solve your problems for you.
friends, allies ... anyone who understands the threat of tears behind this plea and behind a lot of my daily life,
please understand that all I ask of you is that you allow me to write and speak freely about myself. that is, don't let me throw myself overboard, whoring out my secrets and earth-shattering anxieties, but let me tease out my problems and flirt with solution.
yours in being peacefully and willingly scraped-away,
Jaime Redford
